ou were good at what you
did, and that you deserved this chance to make good."

"Absolutely," agreed Hootsey. "But I don't expect that your father gave
you the money. Did you ever get to Waterloo?"

"Well," answered the shadow, "pretty soon I got a telegram from the
Waterloo manager. He said that I had been recommended very highly by
Howard Wakefield, and asked if I would like to come and try out for the
team. The Waterloo manager offered to reimburse the cost of
transportation if I was given a contract."

"But you still couldn't get the money from your father," said Ozma.

"No," sighed the ballplayer. "It was hardly an improvement over Howard's
letter. So I just went upstairs to my room and closed the door. Then I
wrote back a long letter to the Waterloo manager, explaining that I
didn't have any money for transportation. But I told him that, if he
sent me an advance right now for transportation, I'd be on the very next
train to Waterloo and he could take it out of my salary later on."

"That's assuming you were hired, of course," said Lisa.

"Yes," agreed Rube. "But I didn't have the slightest doubt that I would
make good. And, of course, I didn't mention that I was only sixteen
years old. I thought it best to leave that out.

"I mailed the letter to Iowa, and then I waited on pins and needles for
an answer. Every day I had to be the first one to get at the mail,
because if anyone else saw a letter to me from the Waterloo Ball
Club--well, that would have been enough to alert Dad to what was going
on and I'd have been sunk. So every day I waited for the first sign of
the mailman and tried to get to him before he reached the house. As it
turned out, I could have saved myself a lot of worrying."

"No letter ever came?" guessed Lisa.

"Nope. Three weeks passed and still no answer." The shadow sighed again.
"I couldn't understand what had gone wrong. Maybe it was against the
rules to send transportation money to somebody not yet under contract?
Maybe they didn't know how good I really was? Maybe this and maybe that.
It was another frustrating period of my life. Finally, I just couldn't
stand it any longer. I gave my folks a story about camping with the Boy
Scouts and hitch-hiked to Waterloo."

"You lied to your parents?" said Ozma, startled by the very idea.

"Yes, I did. It was a hard thing for me to do, going against Dad like
that. But I was well punished for the deed. Believe me! Have you ever
had to hitch-h